Just Cause 3 Quickstart Guide

Just Cause 3 is a big game, but it’s nowhere near as intimidating as Just Cause 2 to get 100% in. There are a lot of unintuitive systems and tricky challenges, though! I just finished my 100% run, so I’ll share with you my favorite Just Cause 3 tips and tricks in my Just Cause 3 Quickstart Guide!

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General Tips

The main plot line is pretty short, and in most open world games I tend to ignore it in favor of screwing around for as long as possible. One thing you should do, however, is advance to the point where you get the improved grapple, beacons, and flares. Beacons allow you to call in supply drops, and flares let you fast travel.

While you’re zooming around, you may notice an icon that looks like a bulls-eye with an arrow pointing towards the center. These are “encounters” and can be completed for little bonuses, like flare/beacon restock spots. The best bonus is probably unlocking monasteries, which will clear your heat for free.

The C4 in this game is infinite, but firing a weapon will switch the C4 button back to grenades. This is confusing as hell, and you’ll likely throw a grenade at your feet more that you want to before you figure it out.

When attacking a base, outpost, city, etc, the icons for destructible objects will show up on the map. The more you’ve destroyed, the easier they will be to see. This really helps whenever you’re down to just one stupid object somewhere in the area and you can’t find it to save your life.

If you’re trying to find a missing outpost in a province, check the water for oil rigs. They tend to hide out, and there’s more than one time I searched the whole province only to finally notice a rig out in the water. Sigh.

Collectibles

Map Collectibles

Don’t go hunting for collectibles until you’ve cleared a province. Clearing a province will mark all collectibles on your map, plus make fast travel free from within the province. Sure, if you’re standing in a city near a collectible, grab that sucker. But don’t go out of your way searching or anything.

Daredevil jumps are also clearly marked on the map once a province is cleared. They look like a stick figure guy doing a wheelie. In-game, they often appear to be “scenic overlook” concrete ramps. There’s no requirement to land the jump, you just have to go off it.

For the most part, blue icons mean something is complete, while green icons mean you’ve discovered but not finished it. For instance, completed daredevil jumps are blue on the map, and challenges where you’ve earned 5 gears also show up blue.

Question mark icons in a circle indicate collectible items. These could be Rebel Shrines, Vintage Parts, etc. They’re all displayed the same on the map.

Collecting all the Rebel Shrines allows you to fast travel for free from a region, but this is basically the same benefit as clearing a province. Given that you’ll probably clear the province to see the markers before you get all the shrines, this reward is kind of lame.

The Vintage Parts unlock certain vehicles and weapons, but I can honestly say I never used any of them. They can be cool, I guess. Certainly if you’re going for 100%, you’ll need them, and they’re not painful to collect.

Vehicle Collectibles

Most of the vehicles are pretty easy to get – once you have the “Garage Vehicle Detector” just go nuts in a city or two and you’ll have most of the land vehicles. Find a garage adjacent to a bay, and you can probably get most of the sea vehicles. Most of the air vehicles are military, so you’ll get those by taking military bases.

There are a few tricky ones, and one that is a SERIOUS PAIN IN THE BUTT. They are:

Weimaraner – The civilian variant of this is kind of rare, at least it was in my game. There’s a couple parked on a hill on an island, near N 40 49 E 5 38. You’ll need to bring a chopper to airlift it to a garage.

Farina Duo – This is the “F1 car.” I never saw one of these driving around, but often I saw one falling off a flatbed truck on the side of the road. Really, really important for the land vehicle races, so make sure you grab one ASAP.

News Chopper – These are generally found in the city “Citate Di Ravello.”

Verdeleon 3 – There are only three of these, located in a hangar in Montana, near N 40 49 E 5 42. Bringing a chopper can make your life easier, although I think you can just drive this one to a garage if needed.

By far the worst one to find is the Squalo X7. There are two of them parked in lakes on the northernmost island with no ocean or garage access. One is in the southwestern province of Libeccio, in the lake just south of the air race Volo Montania. The other is in the northeastern province of Litore Torto, just north of the boat race Regata Laco.

In order to get one to a garage, you’ve got to drag it to a garage or to the ocean. I suggest maxing out your tether mods before attempting this.

You can do this on land by either tethering it to the ground and pulling it along, or by attaching it to a truck (ie, the Nashorn). Either way, this is a rough way to move a boat, and if you’re not careful you’re going to destroy it before you reach your destination. Take it slow, and avoid hitting other cars with the Squalo if you can.

You can also do this by air, but only with the heavier choppers like the Hrom D or the Mstitel. If lifting by chopper, start by hovering over the Squalo and hit the stunt jump button so you end up attached to the underside of the chopper.

Attach all 6 tethers from one spot on the chopper (ideally along the center line, near the middle of the chopper, to prevent loss of control) to one end, or even one spot on either the front or rear of the boat. Then, lift straight up with max power. This will pop one tether, but the rest should stay anchored.

From here, you’ll need to make changes to your direction and speed very slowly, or more tethers will break. I suggest slowly releasing the throttle when you’ve reached a good height, and gently push the stick in the direction you want to go. If too many tethers break, you can attempt to reattach them, but this is kind of risky.

Be VERY careful when landing, as if you hit the boat at all hard, the Squalo will explode!

Challenge Tips

Destruction Frenzy

The multiplier is key for these. You want to get it to 8 ASAP, and keep it there for the entire challenge if possible. You have infinite time to get set up before the frenzy starts, so you can use this time to set tethers on key portions of the base in order to get ahead of the destruction.

You can blow up enemy vehicles to increase (or maintain) your multiplier, but enemy vehicles don’t get multiplier bonuses. Helicopters, jeeps, tanks, APCs, boats, etc, all count. You can abuse this by putting all the vehicles in one spot and then blowing them up right as you start, instantly getting you 8x for all the rest of your frenzy.

There’s no requirement to use the featured weapon or vehicle. You can swap out at the start of the challenge, and you’re also free to use whatever you can find on the base instead. For instance, a lot of these bases have attack choppers parked in them, and destruction is easier with these.

Wingsuit Courses

On Wingsuit Courses, perfect rings are the key. You want to hit the red ring every time, if you can. Just Cause 3 is pretty forgiving about hitting rings (more on that later…) so you can be mostly out of the red ring and still get credit. Practice a bit so you know what counts and what doesn’t. Perfect rings are worth absurdly more than any other ring clear, so missing very many perfects is going to keep you from 5 gears.

The “air brake” gear mod is excellent for the trickier courses, but make sure you have the “wingsuit quick-close” mod turned off. The air brake can be used to slow you down when you need to dive and then hit a red ring very near the ground. Tapping it can also slow you slightly to make tight turns that seem impossible much easier.

The one that was the hardest for me was Mountain Marathon Tour. There are several spots where you need to dive and pull up just in time to hit a red ring. This one is definitely one I had to practice a bunch before I could hit it.

Crash Bomb

The Crash Bomb challenges are all about getting to the target as fast as possible. Roads? We don’t need roads. Just drive over the land. The hard part is keeping your speed up, so finding the optimal route through the obstacles might take some time.

Once you’ve bailed out, the vehicle will explode at the slightest provocation, so try to wait until there aren’t any gentle hills, trees, stiff breezes, etc, between you and your target.

Races

As I mentioned in the Wingsuit Courses section, the game is pretty forgiving about rings. You can also hold down on the D-Pad to reset to the last ring you went through. If you do this fast enough after realizing you made a mistake, you can maintain 5 gears even when screwing up pretty badly.

Having the boost mods helps, so if you’re having trouble getting 5 gears, get as many as you can on the first pass to unlock the mods and then return for a second pass to clean up.

For land races, I like using the Ogar (military buggy) for off road races and the Farina Duo for street racing. The Farina has excellent cornering and is VERY fast. Don’t be afraid to slow up on turns, since for most races you’ll blow past the 5 gear time with seconds to spare. It’s no good on sand, although it works fine for hard-packed dirt. You can’t always use it, but when you can, you should :)

Air races can be divided into helicopter races and jet races. For jet races, I had good luck with any of the fighters or the bomber. Since the throttle and the boost are on the same button for jets, I suggest just holding the throttle down. Otherwise, you’ll slow down while the boost is recharging and it kind of erases any benefit of the boost. I almost always used the X/B strafing rather than pitching the plane left or right.

For helicopter races, oddly enough I had the best luck with the Hrom D chopper. It can corner much better than the lighter choppers, which means it can get lined up for boosting quicker.

When doing boat races, really the choice is between the Pescapada and the Squalo. If you’re trying to corner, boosting can help you gain momentum in your new direction. Using the handbrake is pretty tricky, since boats tend to just spin out if you’re not careful. The boat races are a good place to use the “reset at last checkpoint” feature.

Tricky Achievements

There are a couple of “not very obvious” achievements in the game. One is Without Bullets and the other is “This was Supposed to be a Western.” Both of these require you to capture a base under specific circumstances. Note that “guard stations” are different from bases, but “ports” count.

These are NOT missable – if you finish the game, you can “re-oppress” any base and try again.

For “Without Bullets” you need to not use guns or explosives to take a base. It doesn’t matter if you die, as long as you come back and finish without firing guns/shooting explosives. This one is easier if you have upgraded tethers, since you can use them to pull things down. You can also tether explode-y stuff to harder targets. I actually had good luck punching the supports on things like Sphere Tanks. If you hang from stuff, you can sucker enemies into shooting it for you – just be sure to get clear before it blows up :P

For “This was Supposed to be a Western,” you need to clear a military base without getting out of your vehicle. Bombers would probably work alright for this, although SAM sites make doing this a bit trickier from the air. I had a pretty easy time of it using a tank to “snipe” targets at Porto Cava in Capite West. The base is spread out enough that you can avoid getting heat for most of the run, which makes keeping the tank in good shape easier.

Obviously, there are a million ways to get these two achievements, so don’t take my suggestions as gospel truth. Go nuts, have fun, that’s what’s important :)

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